


where they think of home

by watermelonsenpai



Series: home is where the heart is [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Futuristic, M/M, Some Scifi Stuff, astronaut! iwaizumi, astronaut! oikawa, don't worry there's a good ending, fluff??, honestly i just wanted to prove to my fren that it was possible, really just creppy, really self-indulgent, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 21:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10727688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watermelonsenpai/pseuds/watermelonsenpai
Summary: Iwaizumi thinks of home, sometimes. There is a field of stars (that twinkle brighter than any he's ever seen) but he can't see the constellations of home. There is air that he breathes but none that smell so the same as Miyagi. There is life, but he can't see his favourite neighbour's dog or the cat that hisses at him in the house two streets down.There are people, but none so similar to the phenomenon of Oikawa Tooru.





	where they think of home

**Author's Note:**

> this was mainly a (implied) challenge from my friend so haha it probably sucks ass but enjoy anyways I spent 30 mins writing this and 10 more checking over it again

Iwaizumi thinks of home, sometimes.

Sometimes, when he climbs into bed in this foreign land where the shrieks of crickets at night are replaced by strange chitters of birds he’s never seen before, he thinks of his smiling, elderly mother cooking him  _ agedashi _ tofu as he waits, sitting at the dining table, as he gobbles the dish up, as his mother scolds him for not saying ‘ _ itadakimasu _ ’ or ‘ _ gochisousama _ ’. He wonders if she’s still alive, and back in Miyagi, tending to her backyard garden. He wonders if she still remembers him.

Sometimes, when he goes for a morning jog, passing trees in colours of neon pink and shocking violet and animals that look like the Pokémon of his childhood, he thinks of days spent scaling trees and digging loose earth to find beetles, painted by nature’s hands in glossy hues of purples, greens and yellows, keeping them in stacks of giant glass jars. He would watch them move slowly, lazily, his eyes tracing their movements, mesmerised and almost hypnotised by the shifting, swirling colours on their shells. He wonders if those days will be forgotten. He wonders if his childhood would become lost to his memory.

Sometimes, when he sets to his work of inhabiting sealife to the seas which of this alien planet, he is reminded of the sea at home, of the Miyagi coast where it isn’t the most scenic but it’s part of his home anyways, where the sun rises with its orange light flooding the water, where the ocean breeze blows in and smacks his face, leaving it red with cold. Here, the water is red and the breeze is never cold.

Sometimes, he wishes he could go home.

\--------

Iwaizumi misses Oikawa.

(and ‘misses’ is probably an understatement)

Perhaps there’s the feeling of hollowness in his chest that refuses to be filled, a hollow that refuses to be replaced by anything because Oikawa’s  _ special  _ ( _ i know that i know that i know _ ) and Iwaizumi guesses that  _ special _ isn’t so easily replaced. His absence takes the shape of several restless nights with thoughts of:  _ is he okay is he okay does he miss me i hope he does but he may not oh god  _ and dark-eye-circled aftermath the next morning. Takes shape in the form of sometimes screwing up during his work hours, like releasing 5 buckets of crabs instead of 2 into the sea, or dumping shrimp in the wrong areas because his head is sometimes plagued with his name and thoughts about him and everything,  _ everything _ . Takes shape in the form of the volleyball he brought with him always in his hands but never really feels right, feels  _ off _ somehow because his favourite setter isn’t there to set it for him.

The hollow won’t go away. It’s like a part of him that refuses to heal, like cancer cells that refuse to replace themselves or people that refuse to die even though they should. Sometimes, he treasures it: it keeps his memory fresh that there’s someone dear to him that he’s not supposed to forget ( _ what if i forget _ ). Other days, he hates it: the pain that comes with remembering becomes unbearable sometimes, with the knowledge that he is probably never going to feel Oikawa’s skin (smooth, warm,  _ alive _ ) under his rough fingertips.

Sometimes, he wishes he could go home.

\--------

Intergalactic communication sucks: everybody here on the colony of Tritea knows this. The operators are perpetually doing something else other than their job, and it takes at least 3 hours to connect back to Earth (a feat of technology, but still terribly slow).

So, when Iwaizumi finally gets through to the Oikawa household’s phone after 6 hours of waiting (he has the whole day off; he’ll wait all day if it comes to it), he has to clench his teeth to stop him from whooping with sheer joy. He paces the room as his words come rapidly through the communication disk device, and instead of Oikawa’s lilting, vaguely feminine tones of home, it’s Oikawa’s mom. It’s weird because his mom almost never picks up the house phone (because it’s always “TOORU GET THE PHONE” in that shrill, demanding voice of hers) and Iwaizumi was more of expecting Oikawa. His whole body is aching for Oikawa but  _ why didn’t he pick up? _

“Hello, Hajime! How are you?” his mom reminds Iwaizumi of delicious  _ onigiri  _ and also watermelon seed spitting during the summer months (she’s a total champion at it), and her voice has a softer, homelier edge than Tooru has. She makes small chit chat, asking about life in the Tritea colony and whether he’s doing okay, and  _ what’s it like there? _ Iwaizumi humours her with entertaining experiences involving a tussle with one of the Zotzes there (which are essentially cats, but bigger and with three tails and smooth yellow skin), but he can’t help but notice the anxious, wavering undertones of her voice as she speaks to him: the slight tremble, the way she ends some of her sentences with nervous laughter, the ‘um’s and the ‘uh’s that are usually never present in her speech (Iwaizumi knows she’s a confident woman).

He can’t even hear the weird noises Oikawa makes in his home, like the whistling that sounds horribly tone-deaf, or the whiny way he asks for yet another piece of milk bread, or the  _ clunk clunk clunk _ on the wooden floor as Oikawa drops yet another of his things (once, he broke his favourite alien mug and cried for a day straight). It’s like he’s been erased from the Oikawa household.

“Oikawa-kaasan, where is Tooru?”

“O-oh, he’s overseas, he won’t be back till next week-” his mom babbles a load of lies, and Iwaizumi can see through them like glass. They’re the least convincing lies he’s ever heard and he just wants the truth so  _ just tell me please _ -

“Where is he?”

Silence. A faint crackle from bad communication signal. A clearing of the throat that feels like it lasts hours.

“Tooru-kun has left. For Tritea.”

Iwaizumi is so shocked that he cuts the connection.

\--------

For 2 years, Iwaizumi waits. And waits. And waits.

Waits for the sign of a new batch of settlers, waits for a sign that  _ Oikawa Tooru _ is coming here, wait for  _ anything _ that could give him hope to embrace him once again, feel his skin touch his. Look into real, alive brown eyes instead of worn out pictures that are fading and getting more and more creases around the edges. Smell the scent of sweat and salt and ocean that imprints his skin. To touch the real, live Oikawa Tooru.

He bears with the pain for 2 years. The ache of longing ever-thrumming in the back of his skull, the screams of  _ hurry hurry hurry _ pounding through his thoughts and disrupting his consciousness frequently, the way his hands itch to refresh the memories of them carding through light, cocoa brown hair and gently holding thin, calloused palms in them. He becomes uncharacteristically jittery, and his fuse becomes shorter and shorter. He turns into less of Iwaizumi and more of nervous wreck, which is weird, because he normally isn’t one. And yet it’s  _ Oikawa Tooru  _ that gets him  _ every single time _ .

Sometimes, he feels the hope dwindling. Slipping away because it’s been two years and he’s not even here yet. And even if he were here, perhaps he found another lover while Iwaizumi was gone? What if Oikawa can’t remember who he is? He can only imagine. He can only imagine Oikawa growing older in a life where he’s been cut out of his life with a pair of scissors, the person cut out of the picture because they don’t quite seem to fit there anymore.

He’s shaken from his thoughts (quite jarringly, I add) by a pod crash-landing in the (pastel pink) sand of the beach Iwaizumi is on. He recognises it as the carrier pod, the pod that brings in settlers, with the three gunmetal grey stripes on the side and a white star in the middle that marks it as carrying settlers, as well as the strange shape it has, as if it were a giant grain of rice. And it’s a carrier pod. A carrier pod.

_ A carrier pod. _

He’s running, dashing, feet taking him as fast as he can to the pod and kicking up clouds of sand. He’s desperate; the look in his eyes is one of vulnerability, sheer desperation and plea as he unlocks the door of the pod because  _ please let it be him please. _ People climb out, one by one (a few Americans, Europeans, Chinese) but none Iwaizumi recognises. He’s about to give up and go back to releasing marine life like he’s supposed to, turning away from the pod in disappointment that’s crushing. 

A glimpse of wavy, coffee-brown hair. A snapshot of eyes that are older, but still smiling like it did years ago. A voice that sounds so familiar, with the diction and intonations of home (he can still remember), with the heaviness that can only come with so many memories. A voice Iwaizumi remembers so clearly, a voice that is so terrifyingly, heart-achingly  _ someone’s _ that his breath catches, swept away by the warm sea breeze. He turns into stone and he can’t move and he can’t think at all and  _ oh my god _ -

“I’m back, Iwa-chan.”

**Author's Note:**

> haha you made it to the end so congrats have a virtual cupcake :) kudos and comments are greatly appreciated!


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